Cannibalizing robots
 

Question. Do you think its ok to take apart robots of the past for parts. If so would you only take a piece or the the whole drive train. My team is currently debating if we want to keep our 2009 robot. And I need excuses to save its life:eek: .

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

we really don't like to take them apart but sometimes we have to. Just say that you need to keep them so that you have show them off when ever you need to

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

I would prefer to keep robots in tact, and that's what 1714 does, but 2791's 2009 robot is completely disassembled. Most of the robot's parts were used either in prototyping or on the competition robot, and we saved a few hundred dollars that way.

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We just play around with the old robots, we sometimes pull off unnessary things then have the bare minimum

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Having old robots that work is pretty useful when you need to do demonstrations to younger students or to show off to prospective sponsors, etc. And then there's the emotional reason, when you ahve a personal connection to the robot. Heh.

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Make the noob programmers program on the old robots to practice

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

We kept our '09 bot until we absolutely had to gut it during the build season (week two). However, we kept it for almost a year. It survived (and won!) an off-season competition and two demonstrations.

It had lots of structural components as well gearboxes that we needed for our '10 bot.

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

Well if it was up to me, i would keep every last one.

But unfortunately my team is a bunch of salivating cannibals that only cares about this year's robot!:ahh: If you care about your machines at all, don't ever park them near the shop during build season. Its starts small with things like PWMs, then all of a sudden a bearing is missing, then a wheel..... It will never end.

But seriously, old robots are very valuable as instruments of inspiration, prototyping tools, and rookie training. We still have our 2006 twins intact and they have been everywhere. I would keep at least one around.

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

With the new control system being mostly reused every year, I have little hope for our 2010 bot. Unless of course we can get our team to spring for a new cRIO and a new set of jags...

We still have a few IFI bots though...offseason T-shirt launcher any1?

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

I obviously see the value in keeping at least 1 robot intact. Usually, we cannibalize the previous years robot about a month before build season starts, as some of the parts generally get used to save on budget. We usually have something at least able to be driven around, though it is usually an off-season project using the old IFI system and not the cRIO (we only have 1).

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

Granted we are only in our 4th year, we keep the good robots. Our rookie bot is totally gone, even the frame. 2008 is in pieces with no drivetrain and missing wiring. 2009 is completely intact since it is a good one for show (and a beast of a bot). We shall see about this year. :)

-Vivek

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

We keep the basic robot (frame and drive train) together, but we take off the other parts as we need them.

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

For the two years I've been on (and evidently in years past too, since we don't have older bots lying around), we've completely disassembled our bot into scrap metal and parts after attending CalGames with it in October. Usually however we keep around a practice bot that is just basic kit chassis + control system, so we can test things on and practice driving and whatnot. We also had a demo/PR bot in years past, but we disassembled it.

I hope we're keeping our Breakaway bot, since it makes a good demo bot (more so than in past years) to replace our old one with. Unfortunately it's not up to me, also if we don't get a new cRIO we'll have to rip it out for 2011.

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Since 2005 we have been mostly keeping our robots intact. I can tell you that I really regret that we completely dismantled 2002-2004. It's interesting to see where you've come from in terms of design etc.

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

Year 1: We finally got it working! There's no way we're taking this robot apart.

Year 2: Well, we need a few parts off last year's robot, and it really wasn't all that good, so maybe we'll just take a few things off it. It still looks like a moon buggy, and thats kind of cool.

Year 3: You know, that first robot doesn't work at all since we took the parts off of it last year. Let's take the control system and motors off, too, and build a practice robot this year.

Year 4: Lets take the motors off the practice robot we built last year to save some money on this year's machine, and we don't really have time to order new pneumatic parts, so let's grab them off the year 2 'bot.

Year 5: Okay, this is getting silly. We've got nowhere to put this year's robot. That old practice robot isn't working at all, so lets strip all the good stuff off of it. And that first year's robot... if we took the wheels off of it then we could store them under a table and... well... let's just take the whole chassis apart, but hang a fancy bit from the wall as a souvenir. And the third year's robot... well, it doesn't really need four CIMs in its drive train any more... it hasn't been in a pushing match for years now.

Year 6: Let's cut up the old chassis from the third year's practice robot and use that as spare aluminum to practice welding. And that second year robot... lets save its arm... that was a cool arm, but everything else can go in storage in a back room.

Year 7: Well, if we're building a practice robot this year we'll need the solenoid valves off of all our old robots, and the wheels... don't forget the wheels... let's recycle some of them. And we can pull the cRio off last year's machine... and lets take the Jags, too... we can replace them with an IFI control system later. And that Overdrive machine... we can re-use it's motors, too... may as well since we're pulling the solenoid valves off the launcher.

So... now we have one working Breakaway robot on its way back to us. One non-working breakaway practice robot awaiting an IFI control system and a replacement AM wheel (we broke one getting air off a bump in Seattle). One non-working Lunacy robot awaiting an IFI control system. One non-working Overdrive robot in need of CIMs and solenoids. One working Rack'n'Roll machine that we're all afraid to do too much to because we have misplaced the the source code to run PID mecanum wheels on all four corners off of interrupts, and none of us remember exactly how it all works, but think mecanum is just too cool to dismantle. One mostly working Aim High robot, with a fully operational pan and tilt nerf ball shooting turret that is just wayyy too cool to dismantle (some might argue whether Aim High was the best game ever, but it sure made for the best demo robots ever), and a collection of parts from the robots from our first two years.

I like to have one or two robots ready to go for a demonstration at all times... three is even nicer if they show off different abilities... but aside from that I think it makes sense to recycle parts and reduce storage space.

But I try to wait until the kids who built them are gone... or at least until they've fallen in love with a new machine.

Jason

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

well unfortunatly our robots have been mostly disassembled.
Our Rookie bot (2005) is in pieces and it's my plan to rebuild it in my garage this summer.
our '06 bot is totally gone, just the cannon is left, but it doesnt work.
'07 is partially intact, wheels still on but no motors, arm is removed, limited electronics remaining
last i saw '08's drivetrain was gone and the arm was detached
'09 i believe is just missing the electronics panel

i really wish they all could be kept running, but mainly '05 since it was our 1st year and you can really tell how far the team has come along and improved over the years.

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

Most of our robots before 2006 have been kept at an alumni's house and recently our stack attack robot has gone missing after we took it out of the big shipping containers our school has :O.

El Toro XII (Lunacy) has basically been sitting in the back of our room, gathering dust (luckily) which pleases me because I loved how it worked :)

El Toro XI (overdrive) was taken apart last year and the chassis was used at the Tech Challenge (in San Jose) before being completely dissasembled.

El Toro X (Rack 'n' Roll), the chassis is completely gone and only the riveted top part and the claw remain.

El Toro IX (Aim High) completely gone

El Toro VIII (Triple Play) I saw it somewhere 2 years ago... since then nothing xD. We do, however, have a tetra that the Sacramento Regional people wanted at last year's competition.

All the other robots are sitting in someone's garage. We usually keep the chassis and use it as a test robot for electrical while mechanical builds the robot

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

If I remember correctly, we currently have 3 Robots that are more than 90% whole and they would be 2008, 2009, and 2010. We also have the drive base from 2007 sitting around somewhere, but we disowned that robot some time ago.

Personally, I think a team should keep as many robots together, even if it's non-functioning, as possible. I'm big on Team history, and I feel that past machines are important to that history.

(Also, everyone knows that if they take anything off of the 2009 robot aside from the cRio and gaming adapter they'll have to deal with me.)

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

1. Do you have enough space to keep that much junk lying around? (Calling a robot junk is questionable but often applicable) my school has about enough space for a backlog of 2 robots so thats what we keep. really thats only the result of lazyness. if we werent lazy there would be no robots out in that shed.
2. What are you going to gain? if you want to train drivers, only keep a drive train. if you want to train programmers, again keep a drive train. if you only have a drive train this is much easier to store.If you want to use it to demonstrate to sponsors scrap the old robot and use the new one. Sponsors like to see the most recent robot.
3. Parts. old robots have so many valuable parts in them that you can reuse. my team has used the same banebots transmissions for 3 years running. old robots house a plethora of useful stuff (including the CRIO and other electronics). Really keeping old robots is a matter of are you willing to keep buying a new crio every year or retrofitting the old control system to the robot.

Basically if you have lots of sponsor money and sponsor space then keep the old robot but if you just a team running out of a school with limited space and budget then definetly RECYCLE(cannibalizing sounds so savage) the robot.

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We kept our 2008 robot because it looks impressive, and we can show it off, we kept our rookie robot because nobody had the heart to disassemble it, and we tried to keep our 2009 robot, but it got the electrical stuff taken out for this year's robot, and we needed the gearboxes and some bearings for our driver training robot. All of our other robots were taken apart.

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We keep ours alive as long as possible... but it really doesn't make sense to spend all that money on extra motors, gear boxes, or electrical components (aka unmodified COTS items).

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We take our past robots apart after about four years, but only when the robot either takes up too much space in the shop or when it simply doesn't work anymore. One of our robots (from the innertube year) we converted into a gutter cleaner. It works rather nicely, actually. Unfortunately, it is also a rather nice driveway-dirtier, because all the stuff it blows out of the gutter has to go somewhere.
And as it happens, re-using a non-COTS assembly (such as a drive train) is not permitted.

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

Our 2002, 2003 and 2004 robot were always used for spare parts. The 2005 robot was the first robot we tried to keep intact because we considered it our first successful robot. After that one, we knew we had no intention of keeping the 02,03 and 04 robots and completely dismantled them. However, some miscommunication with younger students lead to some slightly valuable parts accidently being thrown away (whoops).

Now after four years, the 05 bot has slowly lost parts, so were stripping it down to its frame and giving away its custom parts and frame to the students who built it (now alumni) as mementos. By the way, any 766 alumni reading this, message me to get your memento.

So the functioning robots we have go back to 2006. You can imagine, our closet is very full but I think its a lot more fun and educational to have these robots. We are very excited that we get to play with 5 robots this summer. But If we need the parts, one more bot will be on the chopping block.

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

We try to keep them in the best shape we can. We do harvest for parts as needed, though preferably in a way we can put them back easily. Our rookie Triple Play bot is totally gone (that was before we made the policy), Aim High is still in decent mechanical condition, though we need to rewire it. Rack 'n Roll is almost fully functional, as is Overdrive. Lunacy hasn't changed at all. They're actually pretty useful.
Training: Lunacy has a 6wd wide drivetrain with a deployable 7th wheel. Rack 'n Roll has a standard but decent 4wd, and Breakaway has an awesome 4wd independent pivot. It's good to have diversity, so depending on what we pick next year, drivers can practice if they get the chance.
Programming: The pivot drive is basically a bottomless well of programming opportunities (albeit and difficulties). It's also virtually impossible to test without an actual FRC pivot bot. We won't be getting rid of it any time soon.
Test Beds: We used the Rack 'n Roll bot as a test bed for the cRio last year, which was exceedingly helpful.
Demos: (Not necessarily for sponsors who see it every year, but for community outreach, etc.) Some bots demo better than others. Overdrive is usually a pain with the big ball, and depending on the venue Aim High can be too...well, high. Rack 'n Roll is great in almost every situation, and Lunacy is a crowd pleaser with kids (they like trying to catch the balls). It's also good to show how diverse the robots and games are, if you can bring both.

That said, we don't really have a space problem...currently...in our shop. We made up storage shelves which let us stack them on top of each other, so the footprint's actually pretty small. In 10 years? Maybe we'll get a little more discerning.

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

our rookie was cannibalized fer the overdrive one, which was, in turn was cannibalized fer our lunacy, which is still intact. we try to avoid cannibalizing as much as possible, and the frames from the first 2 are bolted to each other via sum 80/20 to make the chassis fer our t-shirt cannon knightbot, and the manipulator from 07 is still around somewhere.

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2009's robots are great for showing off because:

"This robot is great for demonstrations, I can blast little kids in the face with balls... and they Love It!" -Jim

As opposed to 2008 where you need to carry around an overpass.:rolleyes:

But seriously if you've got to choose, 2009 is probably the better choice.

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Unless you have a Das Boot. But I think that's just us.
Though seriously, I think the better a robot is, the easier it is to use, the better it'll really look. I can imagine 2009 robot would be better because most 2008 weren't really launchers, whereas Lunacy robots had to be (or dumpers, still cool).

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Doing demonstrations with our 2008 robot was a huge pain...though 1189's robot looks nice on a float for a parade :P 2009 and 2006 robots are the best for demonstrations, IMO. What makes 2006 bots better (if they aren't cannibalized yet) is that you don't have to worry about having either a spare control system to use on it, or switching cRio components between the two robots.

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the 2 years I was on the team, I believe we did our best to keep the robots intact, (though we only had a few since we changed schools etc.)

we maybe pulled off different subsystems (intake, shooter etc.) to take a closer look. but the main chassis and whatnot usually stay intact.

I think it was towards the end of 08 we had to disassemble a lot of our robots due to space issues, (we have a small shop behind the drama dept. classroom) so we stripped them all down to basic drive systems and chassis, they are now stacked in a small tower in the corner of our shop.

I know this year we had to take apart the Aim High robot to take a look at how they constructed the roller. it was quite an experience.

We tend to keep our more favorite robots intact, I still think 07, 08, and 09 are still alive (and crippled) but we'll probably give them 2 or 3 more years till we'll need to scrap for space.

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we have a spare cRIO, so it's not a problem
and our show-off bot:

we tried a mascot bot, but it's on hold for now, but it was realy only gonna be another knightbot chassis

Re: Cannibalizing robots
 

That is AWESOME! Nice job on the armor.